Maserati wraps an SUV body around a Ferrari engine. The end result is an Italian sports car that is also practical

by
David Booth | April 19, 2016

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TABIANO CASTELLO, Italy – I am going to ask a seemingly obvious question. Nonetheless, it’s a serious query, one a few of you – actually, maybe more than a few of you – may have to answer sometime around this coming Labour Day: Would you like a sport-utility vehicle powered by a Ferrari engine?

It doesn’t seem like a serious question, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want an SUV with a Ferrari engine underhood. Come to think about it, who wouldn’t want anything on four wheels powered by a Ferrari engine? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Now I am going to make the question seemingly even ridiculous: How would you like an SUV powered by a Ferrari engine for $85,000?

85,000 bucks? “I thought the bloody engines alone cost that much,” I know you’re saying. $85,000 for an entire SUV – a leather wrapped, luxury SUV no less – and a Ferrari powertrain? And what’s this? It’ll also tow 2,725 kilograms? So, you’re saying an SUV with a Ferrari engine that will tow my Malibu Wakesetter 24-footer for about the price of a Porsche Macan? Now you’re just messing with me.

2017 Maserati Levante

But I’m not. Maserati – conveniently, for the hallucination conjured above, is owned by Fiat Chrysler which, as you know, also owns Ferrari – has taken its Ghibli sedan and crafted a sport brute on its skeleton, like so many luxury automakers before it – Audi, BMW, Mercedes and, now, Jaguar – have similarly done. And, like the Ghibli, this new SUV, the Levante you’ve been reading so much about, is powered by a twin-turbo V6 built in Maranello on the very same production line as engines destined for Ferraris.

And what a gem of an engine it is. An updated version of the 3.0-litre powering the Ghibli sedan, this built-by-Ferrari, massaged-by-Maserati twin-turbo is nothing short of incredible. Smooth and sophisticated as one expects in a luxury sled, it is also – at 345 horsepower for the base version and 424 horses for the S – impressively powerful and surprisingly frugal. But what sets it apart, why your Porsche Macan-owning neighbour is going to be just dripping with envy, is the sound.

2017 Maserati Levante

I often wonder, when I rave about the sounds of internal combustion, whether my musings of exhaust as music fall on deaf ears. Tone is one of the most important reasons that I will lament the passing of the internal combustion engine if electricity replaces gas. Tone is why Ferrari’s 458 will soon be a classic and why the 488 will never be. It’s why Ford’s latest Shelby, the newly released flat plane crank GT350, is destined for the pantheon of great American V8s and why the great, hulking supercharged V8 in the last Shelby, the GT500, will soon be forgotten. Anyone can engineer volume; few can choreograph tone.

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It’s especially hard in a V6, making the harmonies spilling out of the Levante’s twin tailpipes all the more impressive. More contralto than basso profundo – nothing with but six pistons can ever emulate a V8’s ability to pound out the bass – Maserati’s is at once frenetic and precise, so seemingly distinct is each individual combustion that one hears every one as individual retort rather than just muddled boom. It helps, of course, that this is an Italian V6, which is the most politically correct way of describing both Latin temperament and exhaust notes. Whatever the case, zipping up and down the gearbox, the high-revving 3.0-litre doing its manic best to emulate a Formula One racer, it’s easy to forget one is behind the wheel of an SUV.

2017 Maserati Levante

And it is very much a sport-utility. Large – the Maserati is longer than Porsche Cayenne in both wheelbase and overall length – the base Levante weighs in at a healthy – as in the operatic definition – 2,113 kilograms. That’s 4,649 pounds, substantial even by SUV standards (about the same as a Jeep Grand Cherokee, while the much bigger, aluminum forged Range Rover Td6 is but 102 kilos heavier).

But, the Levante drives much smaller. Flinging through Italian mountaintop switchbacks, it seems to shed four or five hundred of those kilos, the top-of-the-line 424-horsepower version fairly zipping down the straights while Maserati’s “Skyhook” suspension keeps the meaty Pirellis glued to the road. The low centre of gravity – the lowest in the segment, says Maserati – and a perfect 50:50 weight distribution means the steering (blessedly still hydraulic) remains both precise and delicate. There’s none of the impression of an overindulged former athlete past their prime — as so many SUVs crafted from sedan underpinnings are wont. If sport-utilities all handled this adroitly, auto journalists would have to tone down their oft anti-SUV rhetoric.

2017 Maserati Levante

But one expects such con brio from anything Italian, even more so something wearing Maserati’s trident badge. But, what of its utilitarian abilities? Sport is, after all, only half of the SUV formula. How does the Levante measure up with other utes when the going gets, well, rough?

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Not too darn bad, thank you very much. No Land Rover Discovery or even Range Rover Evoque, the Levante nonetheless has adequate off-road bona fides (apart from those comparatively “slick” Pirellis). We slogged off-road for a couple of hours and while none of the terrain would challenge a Jeep Wrangler, we did venture farther off-road than most Maserati owners ever will, and the Levante remained unperturbed by mud or rut. Maserati’s all-wheel-drive system can vary from a 100:0 rear-to-front torque split to 50:50 in just 150 milliseconds; the variable-speed hill descent control system makes slippery descents a doddle, and thanks to a two-position “off-road” air suspension system, the Levante can boost its ground clearance by some 40 millimetres when gravel turns to actual rock. Indeed, though the Levante’s approach/departure angles – 22 and 26 degrees, respectively – are not as generous as a Range Rover, they’re plenty enough for anything this side of the Rubicon Trail.

2017 Maserati Levante

Other, even more pedestrian, considerations are also well tackled. The Levante’s Touch Control Plus, based on FCA’s UConnect system, is actually superior to many of its Teutonic competitors, and Maserati’s melding of twiddly mouse controller and volume button is pure genius. Leather, even in the base version, is of high quality and, should you really want to flaunt your fashion nous, the Levante is also available in some hide (and silk!) wrought by Ermenegildo Zegna. Legroom in front is plenty generous and even the trunk is spacious. And lo and behold, the Levante even has one of those wag-your-foot-under-the-bumper-to-Open-Sesame automatic trunk lids. I know that might seem an obvious addition to anything deemed a luxury SUV, but it was not so long ago that even the obvious escaped some Italian automakers.

Foibles are few. The rear seats could use a little of the legroom the fronts offer, the seats themselves are a little firm and the Bowers & Wilkins audio system, despite boasting 1,280 watts, can’t match Bang & Olufsen’s incredible sound reproduction. And all that sportiness comes with a price: Even in its Comfort setting (there’s Sport, as well), the adjustable suspension is a little stiff. And the price for that clarity of steering at speed is that it requires a little more effort pulling into a parking lot.

2017 Maserati Levante

Nonetheless, the miracle of this Maserati – and, to a lesser degree, the Ghibli it is based on – is that it offers all the emotional appeal of an Italian sports car with at least a healthy portion of the clinical pragmatism that is, after all, the reason to buy a sport-utility vehicle.

Or as Davide Kluzer, Maserati’s chief press officer, describes the modern Maserati: “Dream cars that can be driven by more people.”

The Levante will be in Maserati dealerships this fall and, though Maserati Canada has not finalized pricing, expect MSRPs to range from $85,000 to $110,000.